


May 6th Drabble

by alohdark



Series: May Days of Drabbles [6]
Category: Marvel
Genre: Gen, Unbeta'd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-20
Updated: 2014-05-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 19:47:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1660337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alohdark/pseuds/alohdark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony Stark is Competent.</p>
            </blockquote>





	May 6th Drabble

**Author's Note:**

> The drabbles in this series are all my attempts to get back into the hang of writing. Completely unbeta'd. All the characters belong to their respective owners. I'm doing this for fun, not profit.

Tony Stark is competent.

Capitalize it. Underline it. Italics and Bold it.

Tony Stark is _**Competent**_.

He may have spent years carefully cultivating a life where he seemed unable, and mostly unwilling, to do a lot of the every day chores he could simply have done for him. But let no one say that even from an early age that Anthony Stark was anything less than able, savvy, skilled, proficient or adaptable. He faced his life head on with all the stubbornness of someone who knew they were smarter than everyone else but didn’t receive the recognition for it from the one person that mattered most.

Tony Stark was able to learn faster and more efficiently than most other Mensa candidates. And Afghanistan taught him a lot beyond that.

One moment Anthony Stark was drinking the best liquor money could buy. At the top of his world with anything and everything that money could buy at his fingertips and all he had to do was say the words and it was his. The next he was laying on dirty sheets in a rotting cave with a car battery hooked to his chest.

He proved his competence there, too. He miniaturized the arc reactor. He saved his own life. He made plans to break out of a terrorist encampment. And he successfully created a suit of armor that allowed him to start making amends with the horrors he had brought to the world by upholding his father’s legacy.

But he accomplished more there than scientific breakthroughs. He learned you can’t mix colours with whites. And that blood never fully comes out once it’s soaked and dried into the fabric. He learned that cooking for two is much more satisfying than eating alone, even if dirt gets into your bowl. He learned that washing dishes puts an ache in your back even if you’re only loading and unloading a dishwasher but especially so if you have to clean every fork and spoon by hand.

He relearned how to breathe with a chunk of his ribs cut out and replaced with cold, dead weight. He discovered ways of sleeping that kept him from tossing and turning and shifting his displaced muscles around. He figured out how to cope with a shifted center of gravity and how to conduct himself like a Stark despite all the agony he endured with his head up, shoulders back, spine straight, and his chin high.

Tony learned that if you threw it at Anthony Edward Stark he would be able to snatch it out of the air and toss it back at you with better aim and stronger force than you had directed at him. He was not going to let a simple thing as a washer machine or raw ingredients or shrapnel from his own goddamned bombs clawing their way into his heart keep him from doing what he needs to get done.

He hoarded this knowledge like a magpie. Even on familiar soil he learned how to do as many domestic things as he could. Bought the best cook books he could find and used the finest ingredients money could buy and taught himself how to cook. Then he taught himself how to many everything he wanted or was a traditional staple food from scratch. Give him salt, yeast and flour and he learned how to hand you back bread.

He scoured homemaker helper websites for tips on how to clean and get rid of stains and smells with around the home items. He spent days learned edible and inedible plants and roots and flowers and nuts and berries and mushrooms from all over the world.

All the while he put on the most expensive clothes and shoes and accessories money could buy from Rolex watches to Maxim cover models. But in his mind he kept running through how to filter water with a rag and in what order he was going to track down the dirty dealings and destroy his weaponry so that no one could use them to harm innocent lives ever again.

So it hurt to a part of him that he tried to keep locked away when people assumed that he didn’t know how to tie his own shoe laces simply because he could pay someone to do it for him. Tony Stark wasn’t stupid. Tony Stark wasn’t lazy. Tony Stark is competent. 

 


End file.
